Trees are incredibly difficult to render and animate convincingly in 3D....until now. If trees were easy to render, then you would see them in most 3D outdoor games such as Golf (Tiger Woods 2002-2005 only, no other Golf game) and other games utilizing outdoor environments. You would also have no use for SpeedTree that is being touted as the tree rendering technology for Unreal engine.

Trust me when I say that rendering a 3D tree that animates and looks realistic has been very problematic for PC game developers until just recently. Tiger 2005's new tree rendering engine takes 3D tree rendering to a whole new level. September 23rd it will be released and you all can see what a realistic, fully living outdoor world looks like.

There is nothing wrong about steeda's statement here other than "half the trees" is a bit vague to be sure. The gist of his statement is correct though yet you seemed to ignore that and go on a rant about his education of tree rendering. One can easily play with these LOD settings with consoloe commands like e_terrain_lod_ratio or e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio as an example to see for themselves.

I have to admit that I did miss the "wide" in his statement. "Half the trees" might actually be closer to truth when you take an entire outdoor level into account, but it is really a function of how far they are away from the camera as to whether they are 2D or 3D rendered. If FC tried to render every tree in 3D that is in many of their outdoor scenes, it would be a slide show. As the camera comes closer to a 2D tree, at some point it becomes 3D. Why render a tree in animation that you could not see moving in-game or even IRL? This is why part of what Steeda says is true and I tried to acknoledge that. My apologies to Steeda for the other comment.

@BigBerthaEA: Cool, thanks for elaborating. I've read about the IDV stuff back when a lot of the U3 news hit, very cool stuff and I agree, rendering realistic (moving, dynamic) foliage is no small task. It's just better for everyone else to provide something like this instead of "hogwash". NP, we all skim at times. I couldn't agree more that the use of sprites for very distant foliage is a prudent approach in the FC engine. To render ALL foliage in a scene as 3D objects (today) would be very wasteful and inefficient. That's big of you to acknowledge your mistake and to apologize to Steeda (now maybe Steeda will apologize a bit more to others in the future ).

Tiger 2005's new tree rendering engine takes 3D tree rendering to a whole new level. September 23rd it will be released and you all can see what a realistic, fully living outdoor world looks like.

Any issues with ATI hardware this year or should the game work well and look exactly the same (or close enough) as on Nvidia hardware. I only ask because I usually pick up TW every other year, but the last one I have is '02 because of the issues w/ '04. Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by BigBertha
Well, that "outdoor" screenshot does not impress me at all. It is not too complicated or difficult to render a screen like that with today's hardware. I find that Far Cry (outdoors) and Tiger Woods 2004 (2005 Beta smokes 2004 so far in immersion qualities...) are far more impressive in rednering outdoor environments. I do not think you can objectively compare D3 to Far Cry or TW in outdoor rendering capabilities....D3 is not even in the same league.

The thing is, No-one has yet created an outdoor map of the likes of Farcry, so your statement is rendered useless. Until a map of an outdoor environment based in a tropical island using the doom 3 engine, all comments will be speculation. You are comparing a tropical rainforest island to a barren landscape of a distant planet. It's almost like comparing the Nvidia Quadro to the Nvidia GeForce/Ati Radeon. The Geforece/Radeon is used to render games. The Quadro is used to render 3d imaging, CG Animation, AutoCAD and things of the such. It sucks at gaming, but under high stress loads of 3d manipulation, even the 6800 can't compare. Your statement is absolutely pointless at this point in time, because there is no direct comparison. Not to mention, doom 3 was the first game on the doom 3 engine. Wait until more games come out with vast outdoor landscapes until you post your thoughts.